THE POISON GARDEN website

Pontifications on Poison

Being some ramblings on events associated with poisonous plants.

Tuesday 28th February 2012

There are many victims of the war on drugs. There are those
who, because of the illegal status of the substance(s)
concerned, fail to seek help when their use starts to become
uncontrolled. There are those involved in supplying illegal
markets who may find themselves incarcerated, wounded or killed
as a result of their activities. And there are the relatives and
friends of these first line causalities who, because of their
association, have their lives blighted and become second line
casualties.

But there are also those whose lives become blighted by the
international regime for dealing with psychoactive substances
and prosecuting the war on drugs without them taking any of
these substances themselves and, quite possibly, without them
being related to or knowing anyone who does. These are the
victims of the International Narcotic Control Board (INCB) whose
annual report is published today.

I mentioned
on Sunday,
the
‘Technical Report’ setting out the estimated requirements
for what the UN calls ‘Narcotic Drugs’ even though many of them
have a stimulating effect not a narcotic one. I’ve been
wrestling with that report, and making very little progress
because there is just so much detail and it is so over-stated.
Does anyone seriously believe that a country can estimate its
need for morphine, for example, to the nearest 1gm? I have to
wonder if the officials in Saudi Arabia, India and the USA, to
give three examples, know how ridiculous their figures are when
they submit them to the INCB.

What I wanted to do was test the hypothesis that some
countries limit the availability of licit medications derived
from the same plants, like Papaver somniferum and Erythroxylum
coca, as substances within the scope of the 1961 Single
Convention on Narcotic Drugs because they fear the consequences
if the INCB finds that some of those licit supplies are leaking
into the illicit market.

That turned out to be far more complex than you would have
thought but, while I was still wrestling with it, the INCB
annual report came along and gave me the answer I was looking
for. Before I come to that, though, I want to write a little
more about the INCB itself.

I can’t help thinking that the big mistake was made by
whoever decided on the name in the first place. I suppose that,
if you’re going to have an international regime for controlling
certain substances, you need some way of evaluating how well it
is working but you could do that with an International Narcotic
Monitoring Board. It’s that word ‘Control’ that causes all the
problems because the INCB really thinks its role is to control
the actions of sovereign states.

And the real trouble comes when those sovereign states are so
cowed by the threats of what could happen to them, in terms of
lost aid and becoming international pariahs, that they, in
effect, cede control to the INCB by trying to stay out of the
licit market. It really seems as though this has led to the INCB
reinforcing its own sense of itself so that it now uses the
language of the schoolteacher intent of punishing any
transgression and equally intent on subduing any tendency to
transgress.

That control language is, of course, mixed with the language
of prohibition where things are viewed from a particular
position and the logical deductions to be made from the language
used just don’t get made.

Almost all you need to know about the INCB is in the foreword
by Hamid Ghodse, the INCB President. Here are a few examples.

For many reformers, the argument for change starts with the
fact that the 1961 Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs calls for
countries to ‘limit exclusively to medical and
scientific purposes the production, manufacture, export, import,
distribution of, trade in, use
and possession of drugs’. This has not happened and, therefore,
critics cite over forty years of failure when referring to the
convention.

The INCB, however, sees its origins, not in the 1961 single
Convention but in the 1912 International Opium Convention signed
in The Hague. Mr Ghodse, with no irony whatever, dedicates the
2012 INCB Annual Report to one hundred years of failure.

He writes;

‘Prior to the adoption of the 1912
Convention, the world was experiencing an abysmal
situation with regard to drugs. In most countries, trade in
drugs was not regulated and
substance abuse was widespread.’

I think a great many people would have followed that by
noting that very little has changed in the past century but, of
course, that is not the view from the inside of the INCB because
Mr Ghodse writes;

‘Over the past 100 years, significant
achievements have been made in international drug
control’

I suppose that’s a reasonable thing to say if you are
referring to the growth in the bureaucracy that has grown up
around ‘international drug control’ but it is completely
unreasonable if you are trying to suggest that there is any real
control on the availability of illicit drugs.

But then he writes a sentence that does not have an ambiguity
of interpretation and is, thus, just plain wrong;

‘The international drug control system is a
great example of how multilateralism can succeed in bringing
benefits to humanity, preventing the abuse of drugs, as well as
the harm caused by such abuse, while ensuring adequate
availability of drugs for medical and scientific purposes,
including the treatment of pain and mental illness.’

There are two parts to that sentence. First, there is no
justification for suggesting that the control regime has had any
success in ‘preventing the abuse of drugs’ and, second, the
notion of ‘adequate availability’ is bizarre, especially in
light of what he writes six paragraphs further on.

But before getting to that, I want to look at two other
points. The first gives a clear indication of the schoolmasterly
bullying that underlies almost all of what the INCB does. As it
was legally permitted to do Bolivia, last year, denounced the
Single Convention and then reacceded to it but with a
reservation over the use of coca leaves by Bolivians in the way
that has been done for hundreds, if not thousands, of years.
It’s worth a reminder, at this point, that a WHO survey,
suppressed by the USA because it didn’t like its findings,
reported this traditional, cultural use as producing almost no
harm whatever.

Mr Gohdse’s reaction, however, is to describe Bolivia’s
action as ‘One major challenge to the international drug control
system’ and to call it ‘contrary to the fundamental object and
spirit of the Convention’. Is the control system operated by the
INCB really so weak and ineffectual that it can be threatened by
action taken by one small country and affecting, mostly, peasant
farmers?

Mr Gohdse ends his foreword by writing;

‘As we celebrate the centennial of the
signing of the International Opium Convention at The
Hague in 1912, let us also celebrate the achievements of the
international drug control system in the past century and
bolster our efforts to make the next century of drug control
even more successful than the last one.’

To look at these ‘achievements’ and get a sense of how
‘successful’ 100 years of ‘drug control’ has been, I’ll quote
what I wrote on Sunday about the reasons for the INCB’s
existence;

‘The International Narcotics Control Board has two functions;
to make sure that people who might benefit from the therapeutic
properties of these substances are able to get them and to limit
the diversion of such medicines to illicit use. That’s my
summary
the full mandate can be read here’

The ‘success’ of that first function is spelled out by Mr
Gohdse himself when he writes;

‘About 80 per cent of the world’s population
has limited or no access to controlled substances; that means
that in most countries many people are suffering unnecessarily.’

By his own hand, Mr Gohdse is saying that around 5.5 billion
people are excluded from proper medical care and we can only
speculate how many suffer serious long-term pain or even choose
to permanently end their suffering because the INCB has been so
‘successful’ in performing its role.